by Michelle Askin
The building at night. My hand tracing the greyish-
white veining of the brown marble. The door left ajar
so that I inhale the cigarette ash, chlorine,
and the soaked rum from the forgotten cake
on the chained metal mailboxes. Palm trees
rowed to the elevator as if to say that within your place
of living is to go further away to the ocean,
which is at least a thousand more exits
from here. The palms I want to reach in
and feel so I can say I came to this city by transit,
for something of somewhat long ago rooting
and birth, and to hold and to grow. So it’s not
just this life of night wandering to walk
a planet made of this blue warm water
softly glowed like the neon lights dreaming
through the city or place where radio songs go
when they have been shut away and gone
so long, and no one quite remembers all that
yearning and unresolved euphoria, what it was
all for. We had just wanted to fall asleep.
That’s all. The silver knob, a dream wheel.
That’s all it really was.